Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

@terifromwinchester: that is exactly what we are al waiting for: a fix from Apple. It's fine to think that battery life would have been a little less than SL with new Lion's graphic features, but not the half.

Macbook Pro 13" 2011 Tested Using both systems:

Battery Life using Lion : 3 to 4 Hours

Battery Life using Snow L : 7 Hours

Will be calling Apple to find a fix. (Not Happy)

Some MBP users say that a battery's charge will last 7-8 hours. And some (often Lion) users claim the opposite, that the time to fully charge a battery is closer to 2 - 4 hours.

Forum member putnik put it another way:

Does anybody have actual data on battery life under different use scenarios; document editing only, surfing only, video conferencing, games playing etc.?

 

Is there a proper benchmarking system available that everybody could use?

The answer to both questions: no, and no. But my short study here is a small step in the direction of answering the first question.

Older, real-life tests http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-battery-life-h otswap.html are illuminating. Otherwise, however, statistics like these are hard to find anywhere.

My statistics are based on one MacBook Pro, as follows, :

MACBOOK PRO 2009, 13" DISPLAY

MODEL: A1278, ORDER #MB991LL/A

PROCESSOR SPEED:  2.53Ghz

CYCLES: 38

AMPERAGE: -977

VOLTAGE: 12208

CHARGE REMAINING: 5123

FULL CHARGE: 5217

All my statistics were done over two days, and apply to the model above. I have a couple of lithium batteries, but the statistics here are from the battery that came with my MBP.

LOW-USE BATTERY USAGE

Power on, no battery, display asleep after three minutes, no fan, no internet

ELAPSED BATTERY TIME: 9 hours, 20 minutes

My first run studied very Low-Use conditions. At first, my MBP estimated a 7 hour battery life. I woke up the display only to look at the battery readings, and the final results were even more impressive than the estimates. The machine didn't get much work, but I did get a baseline reading of my MBP under minimal conditions.

SAFARI BATTERY USAGE

Power on, no battery, display always on, no fan, online using Safari, Flash suppressed, 100% bright monitor

ELAPSED BATTERY TIME: 3 hours, 40 minutes

My next run studied the MBP battery under Safari. My MBP initially predicted a 6-3/4 hour battery life, but after 3:40 of internet browsing, the battery finally hit 0%.

RIPPING AND BURNING BATTERY USE

Power on, no battery, 100% bright monitor, fan on, no browser, drive on continuously

ELAPSED BATTERY TIME: 2 hours, 50 minutes

Ripping and Burning DVD projects require the drive to be in use continuously - one of the more mechanically involved processes one will encounter. In the beginning, my MBP predicted a 6.5 hour battery life. There were very few breaks in disk use. After under 3 hours of Burning and Ripping DVDs, my MBP lost battery power and slept.

CONCLUSIONS

1. When your MBP first says your battery life is, say, 7 hours, that's only an estimate when you're just starting up. The time may vary as the system dynamically estimates your battery life. Your final, real-life battery life before recharging may lie somewhere between 3 and 4 hours, depending on activity.

2. These readings were done under Lion. I don't have any data comparing Lion to SL. I hope other users will build on my results to show the varying performance of batteries between computers and operating systems.

3. Some MBP's of the past might promise battery times of, say 8 hours. These claims are apparently no longer used in Apple's advertising. A footnote to their current MBP states that "Battery life varies by use and configuration."

3. Some MBP's of the past might promise battery times of, say 8 hours. These claims are apparently no longer used in Apple's advertising. A footnote to their current MBP states that "Battery life varies by use and configuration."

Actually, Apple's website still claims "7 hours" battery. This was achieved while surfing the 25 most popular websites using Safari at 50% brightness. (see footnote 2 in the Apple Store on the MacBook page).

I have tried this with Lion, and get 2-3 hours. With Snow Leopard it is at least twice that.

Houston, we have a problem.

Apple just deleted my posts pointing to their own site that identifies their own recognition of poor battery life and the list of applications that create poor (and good) battery life.

Thanks Apple. VERY Helpful.

I don't understand why battery life goes down when the application using the GPU is executing on a minimized application. Are their any programmers here that can point to the code that a developer can use to switch in/out of the GPU so minimized apps don't KILL performance? I'll send that code to Twitter and Vmare, two apps I use.

marysplacestudio,

You're correct. The "7 hours battery" claim appears under "Battery and Power" under "Technical Specs."

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTM3NjU5Mz U

Franc_Iphone,

It's regrettable that your post was deleted. I believe the information gives real insight into the Lion performance issue. But I think the following encapsulates your argument:

And here is the Apple Article again that explains how to detect which applications are using which Graphics set. I am going to report the issue to the application vendors I use since Apple say it's not their bug;

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4152

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

Apple just deleted my posts pointing to their own site that identifies their own recognition of poor battery life and the list of applications that create poor (and good) battery life.

Thanks Apple. VERY Helpful.

Welcome to the club!

I still don't understand how you think the issue is with GPU switching when I'm getting the exact same drops in battery life on my MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011 model) which has only an integrated GPU.

Ilhan Kudeki wrote:

 

I still don't understand how you think the issue is with GPU switching when I'm getting the exact same drops in battery life on my MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011 model) which has only an integrated GPU.

... and that is what I was repeating from the beginning. I have MPB 13" and problem is the same!

It doesn't have anything to do with it, as many of us have figured out throughout the thread.  It's just people grasping at straws to extend their battery life.  But you may also have noticed that logic has vanished a long time ago.

Probably because you're on the wrong track. If MacBook models without discrete GPUs are exhibiting the same issue it's clearly not a GPU problem.

Rather than posting incoherent rants perhaps some constructive information to isolate the problem would be more in order.  I've seen evidence of memory leaks which are more likely to apply undue strain on the system and reduce performance and efficiency including power.  Safari appears to be the likely culprit (possibly part of its new process architecture) or perhaps the an adverse reaction to versioning, we'll see.

And yes, those of us in the developer program were informed of the changes and yes, it's our responsibility to change our software but thanks for graciously not putting me down.

Activity Monitor can outline memory/CPU usage to identify affected processes.   I look forward to your more constructive responses.

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

I don't understand why battery life goes down when the application using the GPU is executing on a minimized application. Are their any programmers here that can point to the code that a developer can use to switch in/out of the GPU so minimized apps don't KILL performance? I'll send that code to Twitter and Vmare, two apps I use.

Maybe we have two problems. I have been researching this for 8+ weeks and have excluded all the red-herrings. Categorically, without fail, relying on this Apple document http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4152, against 20+ applications on my MAC, I can actually see which applications switch the graphics card. Those applications that switch the graphics card (I can see from the System Info per the kb) show and exhbibit the decrease in battery life. Immediately I stop the program, I see the graphics card switch back instantly and the battery life creeps up in a few mins. For the other applications, where the graphics card does not switch, there's minimal impact on the battery life. I get 6-7 hours total if no apps are running that switch graphics cards and 2-3 hours for those that switch. Fact. End of. For me.

All applications show little CPU % drain on my computer once they've settled.

So, if anyone is having the same battery drain issues with the same apps on LION on older Macs and I have ZERO reason to disbelieve you, either my exact symptoms are co-incidence to as to the WHY it's happening OR they are part of an indicator of what be happening elsewhere. My is too much of a 100% repeatable example to just ignore as irrelevant.

Franc_iPhone I don't think it's related to that much with the GPU switching.

There are many users experiencing half battery life that don't have a dicrete graphic card or aren't letting the system switch to it when on battery.

I've posted another possibile direction which is a potential security flaw discovered on last July, and it is related to the battery chipset. The same security issue apply also to iOS devices and it seems that people switching to iOS 5 are experiencing battery drains either (I'm having that problem too on iPod touch).

Unfortunately my post got cancelled by moderators of this board; I'm not gonna add any further comment or adjective about their decision. Neither insist about that argument cause it seems people managing this board get stressed too much when it comes to this topic. I just find it silly cause anybody can get those information elsewhere and on many other tech forums/blogs/news sites.

Bye.